Blogs from Urals, Russia, Europe - page 2

This time I had two trains, Petersburg – Moscow and Moscow – Kungur, because the direct train from Petersburg to Perm arrived late in the evening, inconvenient for me (a hotel would have to be booked). Instead, I planned the route Kungur – Perm – Izhevsk – Sarapul, with secure time margins for any mishap. I’d have three trains and three buses. I have found Kungur Ice Cave on some Russian tourism web site, and here are my findings. I find no better companion for a 20-hour train journey than a Wodehouse book and, let’s say, a mp-3 player with Dave Clarke’s White Noise techno show. Time flies so quickly and you don’t have to count the kilometers. I should warn the readers that spring is not the best time to travel in many regions of ... read more

I will briefly state that I had to postpone my great plans for alpine skiing this season. It was excellent ski-trekking in Kirovsk, Hibiny, and I needed at least a couple of days of alpine skiing so that winter was not spent in vain. I decided not to ski in Kirovsk because slopes there turned out rather extreme for me. I fully understand that two days of skiing mean nothing, but it turned out an excellent ‘week-end’ (in the middle of the week). I bought rail tickets several weeks in advance and asked my friend Alexey to join me. He said, we’ll see, and now we both have returned from the resort. I decided to go to the Urals, the ski resort of Abzakovo. The choice is obvious because it is close to my hometown, Birsk, ... read more

For the next stage of my journey I had a second driver, Andrey, and we covered the 600 kilometres to Chelyabinsk without any problems. It is a great geographical myth that the Ural mountains are high, or really even mountains at all. Perhaps there’s a feeling that Russia is so impressive in other dimensions that these famous mountains ought to be big, or that there should be a suitably dramatic barrier between Europe and Modor. The highest point (Mount Narodnaya, 1894m) is in the far north of Russia, and the Urals are in the middle of a big continent, furthering their appearance as gentle hills. All the same, the appearance of some inclines contrasted the plains of the Volga region. In May I attended the wedding of Ilya and Nadia, some of my closest friends in ... read more

Walked round a museum today, where I learnt that during Communist times Russians were discouraged from practising religion, which meant that Christmas decorations were produced that bore no resemblance to anything that one would normally associate with Christmas, featuring instead things like vegetables and spacemen. I also learnt that when Christian missionaries first reached the Urals, they found the natives were used to worshipping wooden carved icons representing their own Gods. The only way they could persuade them to worship Jesus was to produce wooden versions of Jesus, which are now a distinctive feature of Christianity in the Urals. It's these small details I find most interesting!!... read more

Yesterday's train journey felt like my first proper Trans-Siberian experience, the first journey where it had been possible to spend hours looking out of the train window at classic, unbroken Russian forest, lost in thought. It seemed a shame to arrive in Perm, especially as, like a lot of Russian cities, it looked unpromising from the train station, very grey, Soviet and confusing to navigate. But Perm turned out to be fun, a modern, vibrant city very passionate about art, particularly modern art (and it's twinned with Oxford). Dotted around the city are various statues and installations, almost all from the past decade, that feature heavily on postcards and that the inhabitants of Perm seem very proud of. They include a huge Russian letter "P" (for Perm) made from logs, a bronze statue of a bear ... read more